Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Aadu Ott
Båtsmansv 11, SE-433 64 Partille, Sweden
Lars Broman
Stångtjärnsv 132, SE-791 74 Falun, Sweden
Introduction
Harry Martinson's Aniara was published in 1956 and has given rise to several different stage versions but - strangely
enough - not yet any movie. Most well-known is the opera version of Aniara by the Swedish composer Karl-Birger
Blomdahl and with a libretto by Erik Lindegren; the opera had its premiere at the Stockholm opera house in 1959.
The first planetarium version of Aniara was produced by Björn Stenholm using music by Dmitrij Shostakovich for
Lund's Planetarium in Sweden in 1988. It was followed by a rather different but still Swedish Aniara produced by
Mariana Back for Kosmorama Space Theater in Borlänge, 1989. She used contemporary Swedish music by the
electronic music composer Ralph Lundsten and others.
The show was well received, and in the meantime the translation of the Aniara songs into English by Stephen Klass
and Leif Sjöberg was well on its way. Back subsequently made a version in English based on their translation, a show
that had a rather dramatic premiere on 16 July 1990 in the presence of Martinson's widow Ingrid and children, as well
as the some 250 delegates of the IPS'90 Conference themed "The Boundless Planetarium" in Borlänge - the
premiere was all but wrecked by a sudden thunderstorm.
One of the delegates was John Hare, then director of Bishop Planetarium, Bradenton, Florida. He liked the show, the
story, and the poetry so much that he decided to produce a new Aniara planetarium show, which could be packaged
and distributed to English-speaking planetariums. This show was completed and presented to the international
planetarium community during the IPS'92 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1992.
In the production, Hare co-operated with both Back and composer Jonn Serrie, Future Music, Atlanta, Georgia, who
wrote new original music for the show. The lyrics used in the show were also this time by Klass' and Sjöberg's
acclaimed translation. We were asked by Hare to write the text for a booklet with some background and explanatory
information about Martinson and Aniara. With minor changes, it is the text from this booklet that follows.
Aniara continues to inspire composers and artists in Sweden. This spring a new stage version called Aniara - a
musical journey in time and space has been shown to a large audience in Stockholm with music by Carl-Axel
Dominique and featuring the internationally well-known musical artist Tommy Körberg. We hope that the publication
of our text in the Planetarian will make a few more planetarians take an interest in Aniara, read the complete epic,
and set up the Hare-Back-Serrie show.
The Author
The epic Aniara is one of the main works by the Swedish author and Nobel laureate Harry Martinson.
Martinson was himself an autodidact and had received his poetical experience far away from traditional academic
circles. He was born in the southern part of Sweden in 1904. His father died when he was six years old and soon
after, his mother left him and his five sisters and emigrated to America.
The children were left in custody of the society, which in the early 20th century rural Sweden meant that they were
taken care of by the farmer who demanded the least money for taking them. This is how Martinson grew up and
spent his childhood.
He went to sea at the age of sixteen and worked as a stoker, jumping ships every so often and drifting around the
continents of the world by foot and by boat. This period of restlessness during the formative years of his life gave him
a lot of material and life-lasting impressions which formed the content of his later writing. He felt himself a nomad
without a home but at the same time feeling at home everywhere in the world.
Bad health made him return to his home country in 1927. Jobless and without formal education, he had a hard time in
Sweden, sometimes even begging on the streets of Göteborg or sleeping out at nights in a tent of his own design in
Stockholm.
He came, however, in contact with other young poets and initiated his career as an author. His marvelous style of
painting with words and the hard but unique experiences of his life, which he was able to utilize in his writing, soon
gave him a national and Scandinavian reputation as an author. "I have spent my whole life painting with words", he
said later on.
Martinson married a female author, Moa Swartz, in 1929. Their passionate and stormy marriage lasted until 1940,
and in 1942 he remarried and had two daughters with his wife Ingrid nee Lindecranz.
The autodidact, sailor and vagabond was elected into the honorable Swedish Academy in 1949. He also became
honorary doctor at the University of Göteborg in 1954.
Martinson received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1974. The motivation for the prize was: "For an authorship that
catches the drop of dew and reflects the Universe".
Harry Martinson died in 1978, thereby ending a fabulous life story in which he once started steam engines as a low-
ranking hand and ended as a member in one of the oldest and most prestigious academies of the world.
He wrote in Swedish, and it is difficult to make full justice to his poems in translation to other languages. Therefore he
remained above all a Swedish poet.
The poetry of Martinson started with traditional themes, but his interest in the way the Universe worked brought these
matters into his writing. He tried to make poetry out of modern science. This is a difficult task for a poet and is seldom
undertaken.
He describes the difficulties for a person trying to understand what the Universe actually is like. "We know that we
cannot adhere to earlier beliefs, but we do not understand the modern conception of the world".
Martinson is maybe best remembered as the poet who undertook the task of acting as a mediator between science
and poetry, between the wish to understand and the difficulty to comprehend.
He was also utterly concerned about the strange dissociation of intellect and emotion in our culture and he wanted to
bring into science that holistic way of thinking which is the essence of poetry.
For many years Martinson had a vision of writing a story about some kind of spaceship traveling through deep space.
He had, of course, in this vision an idea of writing a story about life on spaceship Earth with its promises and
shortcomings. The inspiration to start composing was, however, lacking.
In the year 1953 many events took place on the world stage. Among other things the Soviet Union tested its first
hydrogen bomb; the United States had one already. The tension between the two superpowers reached a maximum
with insurrections in Eastern Europe and military planes were even shot down. These events made deep impressions
on Martinson. The final impulse for writing the poem Aniara came, however, from another and unexpected direction.
Soon afterwards he began having the illusion of actually being in a spaceship. At first his feeling was chaotic and he
felt himself filled with anxiety, but gradually the visions began to clarify themselves inside him, and the songs about
Doris and Mima came into being in a couple of weeks' time. Doris is the name of one of the Greek god Oceano's
daughters and symbolizes earthly fertility and womanhood. Mima comes from the Greek word for miming.
Harry Martinson dictated the story for his wife while lying on his back. He later commented on this with the words, "I
am not making up this poem, it just reveals itself for me".
In the fall of 1953, Martinson published a collection of poems called Cicada. In the few weeks time the last section
was changed and a part called "Doris and Mima" was added to the book.
The full story about spaceship Aniara was completed in 1956 and published later that year.
The name Aniara has been interpreted in several different ways. In his earlier poetry Harry Martinson sought a word
which could name the strange space in an atom where the electrons moved around. This word later became the
space through which planets and stars move. Aniara has also been interpreted from the chemical symbols for argon,
one of the elements in air, and nickel, an element in the ground. As the letter a implies a negation, the word Aniara
can be imagined to mean not in air and not on Earth; i.e. in empty space. Another interpretation is that the word
contains several letters a, as in the word mama. This could be a sign of his lifelong longing for his mother who
deserted him.
The first song tells about the situation in the departure hall before the spaceflight to planet Mars.
In songs 2 to 29 the first part of the journey is described. This phase ends with the death of the Mima.
Songs 30 to 68 make up the second phase and tell about attempts to repair Mima and an attempt to recreate reality
by creating a world of visions. This phase ends with secret wishes that the journey might come to an end.
Songs 69 to 80 constitute the third phase of the space odyssey and this part is dominated by memories about life on
Earth.
Songs 81 to 101 make up the fourth and last phase of the space journey to its final end.
The last two songs are comments on the poetic cycle by the author.
The Aniara story makes a strong impression on its readers. It tells about a spaceship which meets a disaster and
drifts into an eternal journey without an end. It is a story about modern man traveling in the outer and inner emptiness
of himself. It can also be visualized as a picture of our modern civilization, characterized by its perfection of means
but lack of aim.
In this poem, Martinson describes his feelings for the planet Earth in a very sensitive way. Following his approach
one could expect the poet to extend his lyrical picture of Earth, but he continues abruptly with the following lines:
This verse tries in a condensed form to transmit to the reader that feeling of reverence which the poet has towards
the Earth and at the same time to give through the poem a warning that man is bursting the frames for life given by
nature. He regards himself as giving a Cassandra-warning.
The author also calls attention to the fact that one can find protection from anything but mankind (poem 26):
One profound thought in the poem is that we, who inhabit the Earth, still possess a place to dwell and live in, as
opposed to the space travelers in the doomed spaceship Aniara.
In a radio interview on the eve before the publication of Aniara, Martinson pointed out that what he wanted to say was
just that we should be careful with the bountiful planet Earth, "We live in a Paradise, but we do not take care of it; that
is the essence of what I want to say in my epic."
The Earth is thus made uninhabitable by pollution and radiation and the people are sent off to other planets to try to
survive there until the Earth has recovered. The character Doris turns up in the poems in different shapes, first
representing a female beauty to be loved and worshipped and later in the epic as the planet Earth and even as a
symbol for life itself.
We observe the take-off of one of gigantic spaceships, the huge golgonder Aniara, which is due to make a purely
routine start for Mars with 8000 people on board. The word golgonder can be interpreted in different ways, one being
associated with the gondola of a balloon.
Golgonder Aniara's locked, the siren gives a wail
for field-egress by the old routine
and then the gyrospin commences towing
the golgonder upwards to the zenith light
where magnetrinos blocking field-intensity
soon signal level-zero and our field-release occurs.
And like a giant pupa without weight,
vibrationless, Aniara gyrates clear
and free of interference out from Earth.
A purely routine start, no misadventures,
a normal gyromagnetic field release.
Who could imagine that this very flight
was doomed to be a space-flight, like to none,
which was to sever us from Sun and Earth,
from Mars and Venus and from Dorisvale.
However, some time after lift-off a disaster happens, as told in poem 3:
The description of the disaster gives hints to the poet's profound symbolic conceptions. He expresses his aim with the
poem in disguised sentences which could be interpreted as follows:
There does not exist any asteroid named Hondo, but this name alludes to the Japanese island Honshu, where the
first atomic bombs were dropped. The term I.C.E.-twelve could together with the words Magdalena Field be
understood as mankind's attempt in an ice cold attitude to forget these events, instead of repenting as the sinner
Mary Magdalene did.
A Journey to Eternity
After the disaster the spaceship drifts towards interstellar space with the steering system locked so that the nose-
cone is pointing steadily in the direction of Lyra, the constellation of poets. The life supporting systems onboard are
intact with heating, gravitation and lighting functioning properly.
Having overcome the initial shock of finding out the consequences of the disaster, the people on the spaceship are
filled with horror because of the fate which is awaiting them. After a while, they manage to calm down and try to go
back to the same habits they had on earth. They make attempts to live, love, and spend their lives in as normal ways
as possible. As on Earth, different groups of people act in different ways. They start different cults, out of which the
sexual one attracts the most people.
The continuing epic describes how the journey through space proceeds. Space is in this context regarded as the
outer endless space surrounding the spaceship, but the journey also takes place in the internal space of minds of the
travelers.
The spaceship is filled with echoes of its own past life and is thus a picture of our own world spinning in space, filled
with history and artifacts of time gone by. In a subtle way Martinson describes how earlier cultures have existed and
how explorations into science have been undertaken.
With profound symbols the author catches parts of the modern conceptions of the world, including strange notions
like anti-matter, the curved Universe of Einstein and concepts from the microcosmos.
The man tending the Mima is named the Mimarobe. He is not only the operator but also, as the Mima has a mind, its
confidant:
During the travel into eternity the Mima is thus extremely valuable as it creates pictures and diverts thoughts from the
hopelessness in the situation. It is interesting to notice that the Mima, contrary to the Mimarobe, nowhere is
mentioned to have any influence on the technical operations of the spaceship.
The Mima is also a seeker and takes its visions from other places than the empty space they are traveling through. It
also transmits pictures and scenes from other worlds, but never tells where those worlds are located.
With these words the author wants to point out that after mankind has been able to break the seal of nature and
succeed to utilize the powers hidden deep in the nucleus of the atom, a wholly different world situation has
developed. Mankind has become hostage of those having the key to firing buttons of the atomic bombs.
In another context we may say that the same is valid regarding the storage of nuclear waste. The responsibility is
now eternal for mankind to take care of these potentially lethal environmental threats.
Even the Mimarobe is touched by this feeling and he dances with a young girl from Dorisburg, Daisy Doody, who tries
to seduce him, lustily singing:
In an interview, Martinson has pointed out that Daisy Doody stands for pure happiness without deeper reflection. In a
later poem in Aniara the Mimarobe meets Daisy Doody again and she still has the same attitude to life. One could
reflect that it of course is good to be able to be happy, but the picture Martinson paints of her is at the same time one
of a stagnant character. Another point of view is that the yurg and the slang of Dorisburg is the manner Daisy Doody
has, to keep disaster as a distance and to survive in these tragic circumstances.
This is a turning point in the epic, and since the Mima has a conscience, as related by the Mimarobe in song 28:
This is the end of the Mima who dies as a consequence of mankind's cruelty. The original story, "The Songs of Doris
and Mima" was told this far in the first publication in the year 1953.
A demonic dictator called Chefone turns up. He has doubtlessly been modeled after Hitler, and the name also has
some hints to Al Capone.
A hard time starts for the intellectuals and especially for the Mimarobe, because Chefone is angered by the death of
the Mima. Every dictator has a need of some sort of diversion for the people. The Mimarobe is thrown into jail
together with other scientists, while non-intellectuals are ruling:
Chefone now ordered persecutions,
and I and many others were detained
in shelters farthest down in the goldonder
until the bowls of fury had been drained.
In an earlier part of the poem cycle, we had a short encounter with a remarkable person, the female pilot Isagel. She
is also jailed together with the Mimarobe.
It is however not possible to keep such a high-tech construction as a goldonder in working condition without experts,
and Chefone had to release the Mimarobe:
Later in the poem cycle we get closer acquainted with Isagel. She is a character who has a platonic background and
she represents the pure intellect and incarnates the archetype of truth. Later on, the author tells us that Isagel is a
reincarnation of the goddess Isis, who according to ancient Egyptian beliefs ruled over space and knowledge. Isagel
is described as a parson with seemingly a contradictory personality. Through her intellect she is capable of the most
profound mathematical studies but at the same time she is taking part in the sexual rites on board. In spite of her
incarnation as a goddess she dies as told in song 88:
The last verse alludes to the modern concepts of the world where chance and probability have substituted
determinism. The verse can also be interpreted as a hint to the start of the Universe by an immense primordial
explosion, the Big Bang, when space, time and matter were simultaneously created.
Later on the Mimarobe understands that Isagel was the very soul of the Mima.
A third female character is the blind poetess from Rind. She sings very beautiful songs and represents the eternal
archetype of beauty. She has the talent to make up the most beautiful songs, but the listeners are critical of her
songs:
In the songs we also meet a group of beautiful Women who practice the art of love. Libidel, Heba, Yaal, and Chebeda
are all leaders of the sex cult. This is, however, a sexuality of the same kind that is shown in the movies, only for the
sake of lust but without any biological purpose of reproduction. For example, the name Chebeba of one of the
courtesans means "chi baby", i. e. no baby. The dancing is also preferentially taking place in front of mirrors; it is a
self satisfying and exhibitionistic self-centered eroticism as told in song 36:
And there's Chebeba in a yurghic ring,
whirling towards the mirrors' Not-a-thing,
where dance eightfold Chebebas to and fro,
with breasts and feet repeatedly on show.
The engineer, mentioned in this poem, is an expert on yessertubes. This gadget is nothing we know in a technical
context. But if we instead consider the word yesser, we might pronounce it as "yes sir". The poet obviously means an
engineer who on all occasions is willing to put his ability at the hands of those in power. Another subtle point in this
poem is the use of an exact date in an empty space where days have no meaning.
Hardness of Life
Eventually the hardness of life in space affects the travelers more and more, as described in song 35:
When Martinson was asked to comment upon this song he said that he had the Sermon on the Mount in mind and its
request to do unto your neighbor as you would have him do unto you.
Space Cadets
On board the spaceship a daily routine is tried, song 62:
In this poem we are presented a picture of a dynamic astronomical event in the grand scale. The Gopta is an art
consisting of the most profound aspects of science. The formula Gopta through qwi ia a form of the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle. A hint is also made to old Manichaean traditions of the eternal war between light and darkness,
a motive found in several of the songs.
Xinombra
For Martinson, one essential motive which we encounter every now and then in the epic is the motive of a town
annihilated by an atomic bomb. In poem 64 is told:
In order to get rid of this vision the passengers start using drugs, song 66:
This song has an origin in the ancient tale about how Orestes, after murdering his mother and her lover, to refuge in
Delphi, but was haunted by the goddess of revenge.
Here is another allusion to the curved Universe where all and everything just falls eternally along lines in the
geometry of four-dimensional space-time, which the author here names loxodromes.
In one of the last poems, 102, the author lets the Mimarobe express his visions about what future he had wanted for
mankind:
In an earlier version Martinson had tried to have a happy ending of the epic. "But as little as a furnace forgives the
child who places his hand on a hot plate will nature forgive mankind for its behavior when mankind is breaking the
cosmic laws", is the comment by Harry Martinson when asked why the tragedy had to be fulfilled.
The author expresses the difference between the physical laws which are valid in the cosmos and the fundaments for
life in song 102:
Martinson comments on this song in an interview: " Aniara is a cruel epic. It gives the law, but not the gospel. When it
has gone so far with mankind as in Aniara, then we will not get the gospel easily. We may only regain it by making
repentance."
The author describes the ultimate end of the space journey in the final poem 103:
I turned the lamp down, I appeal for peace.
Our tragedy is done. Occasionally
I've used my envoy's warrant to release
views of our fate through the galactic sea.
With undiminished speed out to the Lyre
for fifteen thousand years the spacecraft drove
like a museum full of things and bones
and desiccated plants from Dorisgrove.
Even if the epic cycle did not have that false happy ending which we have been accustomed to from the cultural
products originating from Hollywood, still just the mere fact that Martinson undertook the mission of writing the poetic
cycle Aniara is a positive sign in the strange brightmare the world has turned into.
Sources
Excerpts are made from:
Harry Martinson, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space. Translation by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg,
Vekerum, Box 237, S-240 15 Södra Sandby, Sweden 1991. (The book is e. g. available through the internet
bookstore www.bokus.com)
As general sources we have used:
Sonja Glimset Hall, Aniara - studiehandledning för skolor, Vekerum, Södra Sandby 1991.
Erland Lagerroth, Aniara - en dikt av sin tid, Vekerum, Södra Sandby 1991.
This text was originally published in 1992 jointly by Bishop Planetarium, 201 10th Street West, Bradenton, Florida
34205, USA, and Broman Planetarium, Kärnvedsgatan 11, SE-416 80 Göteborg, Sweden.
Reprinted from the Planetarian, Vol 27, #2, June 1998. Copyright 1998 International Planetarium Society. For
permission to reproduce please contact Executive Editor, Sharon Shanks.